For those of you not on Facebook, here’s what’s keeping me on my toes this week:

I’ve been hired to develop (and execute, but that comes later, obviously) a new marketing narrative for a one-year-old company that sells medical cannabis to consumers online. They have an “urgent need for a more coherent and compelling narrative & CTA for consumers, as well as print marketing tools to reach retailers, health practitioners, and physicians.” I won’t even go into all of the challenges that will come once it’s time to finalize copy due to current US federal regulation of cannabis, but outside of that, here is my challenge:

I am collaborating with a designer who also has a decades-long career in corporate advertising (she knows copy and is super smart and creative). The marketing director who hired me is also very experienced and intimidating as hell. Basically, I feel like I just learned to swim and all of a sudden one day I found myself on the starting blocks at the Olympics.

Here’s where we’re at: The designer and I presented two ideas last week. Basically mocked up home pages + subpage. We got great feedback on the imagery and theme for one of the ideas presented, but missed the mark in the “compelling narrative and CTA” so we are revising to present again on Tuesday afternoon.

I realize that in the collaboration process, what I didn’t do was hold up the “So what?” argument for CTAs. Also headline and subheads for each section were not well thought out as far as flow – the narrative that gets the person to make a purchase. This is an e-commerce site, after all. Even though it is awesome to collaborate and brainstorm with another experienced marketer, I am finding it challenging to walk through this with the designer because I get so sidetracked from my own process. She is basically acting as “creative director” and the suggestion is that I follow her lead, but man…..it’s new and uncomfortable. I feel like there is a lot at stake for this round. He wants to be WOWed and she is nervous, which makes me nervous. Project is well underway, so it’s not about winning the job anymore, it’s about delivering quality work and staying on schedule.

I’ve done some back to basics work on my own this weekend after a frustrating brainstorming session with the designer. My job tomorrow morning will be to revise the headlines, subheads, CTAs, and button copy for a four-step narrative (compelling, coherent, fabulous, etc.) that brings the prospect from the home page to the sale.

Tips? Thoughts? Words of wisdom? I’m ready for cheerleaders to remind me that I can do this. I realize that I usually working for clients who don’t know shit about marketing……this is waaaaaaay harder. And I know it’s really good for me. And hard. Did I mention, it’s hard?